Crazy Ex Breaks into Tenant's House and Landlord Powerless to Get Her Removed

How would you feel if you owned a property, and a tenant's ex, after not living with them for three or four months, whose name isn't on the lease, broke the window of your home and began living in it?

You'd probably assume, like a TikToker named Steve (@magicmansteve) that they were trespassing and the police would have no qualms about removing them from your property.

However, Steve says that this wasn't the case, and delineated the crazy legal hoops he had to jump through in the situation that seems like it was ripped out of an absurdist comedy, if everything he is saying is true: "Here's a crazy landlord case with a tenant you probably won't believe. So we have a couple that moves into one of my houses, boyfriend/girlfriend, he's on the lease, and he rents it from us, she's not on the lease. So they have a fight. And for whatever reason he moves out to New York, but he's still paying because it's his apartment, his house."

Steve continues his story, stating that his girlfriend no longer stayed in the apartment building, so the place that the boyfriend is renting from him is unoccupied.

This is when the tale starts getting a little weird, "Then we find out, three or four months go away, nobody's in the house for three or four months, but he's paying us, so be it. Then she's in the house. Three or four months later she breaks in through the window."

As the creepy music in the background continues to set the tone for Steve's story, he begins to detail all of the woman's illegal activities inside of the house. "We find out from him that she's in the house and she's not supposed to be there cause it's his house and he's the person on the lease, which he's right, so, we go down there, we call the police, to get her out of the house."

At this point it becomes clear that Steve is now expected to take care of a situation with a tenant he probably never thought he'd have to ever address: "She's saying we're harassing her. We're harassing her. She'd broken the window to get into the house so now we have a broken window on the house and it's not her place to even be there."

Steve continues to go off on the ridiculousness of the woman's harassment claim: "And she hasn't lived there for three or four months because she left the boyfriend and they separated or whatever they did. And he's telling us she doesn't belong there, she shouldn't be there it's my place, blah, blah blah."

The TikToker again mentions that whatever his tenant decides to do with his time away from his apartment is his own business and speculated that maybe he's continuing to rent his place for the summertime, but whatever the reason, it's of no concern to him.

He goes on with his story, "So, what happens? Do the police escort her out of the house? No. We have to go to court. Of course we have to go to remove a vagrant out of the house. A squatter, whatever you wanna call them right. So she gets to stay in the house that she broke into, that's not her house."

To make matters even more insane, Steve says that the woman files harassment charges against him, so now he has to go to court and plead not guilty to harassment charges, "for harassing this lady who broke through a window, climbed into our house, we find out from the tenant who hasn't been there for three or four months as well, that she doesn't belong there."

The TikToker goes on to say that even though this woman broke into his house, the police allowed her to stay in the home and that he has to formally evict a woman whose name isn't on the lease and who hasn't been a resident of the building for months.

He continues his story, "The first court date that we take her to, she shows up and the mediator, cause you don't go in front of the judge right away, you listen to the judge and you go into a little room and the mediator says well, how much rent does she owe you?"

Steve says he replied, "She doesn't owe us anything she doesn't belong there."

The mediator then says, "Well you have to work something out."

Steve has trouble trying to express how insane the situation is, "What if she moved into your house what would you work out?" he asked the mediator.

The mediator then says: "Oh don't be rude to me, sir. I'm not being rude I'm just trying to explain to you."

Viewers who saw his post had a variety of different replies. There were some who seemed to be bitter towards landlords in general, with one person suggesting to Steve that if it's too stressful to handle situations like this then he should get out of the business entirely.

Another person remarked that the woman may've been going through tough times and is probably still in love with her ex and that he should lend her a helping hand.

Someone else said that he shouldn't care as long as the rent is paid and it's up to the tenant to call the cops and let them know that she shouldn't be on the property.

However, there were others who said that Steve could've gone about things differently. He should've asked the woman to provide documentation that she was on the lease or provide a key she had to the house.

If this was your building, how would have you handled it differently? Do you think that Steve did everything he needed to do? Or do you believe that the tenant should've called the police to file a formal complaint?